In an awesome move, National Geographic and Google Maps have teamed up to bring Nat Geo’s awesomely detailed, historical maps to the masses through Google’s tried-and-true maps engine. I already do a bunch of my travel planning with Google Maps, and being able to overlay Nat Geo maps on my trips seems like a great new feature. Maybe I’m trekking over land that has been resurveyed over the years? Coastlines moved? Ruins discovered?
What’s the most exciting thing about participating in the Google Maps Engine public data program?
Google Maps Engine lets us turn our maps into interactive full-screen images that can be panned and zoomed and overlaid with tons of great data. We are proud of our century-long cartographic tradition. The Maps Engine public data program will help get our maps out into the world where more people can enjoy and learn from them.
Here’s the widely available view of Dominican Republic – I’ll update to my own custom NatGeo map when they get back to me on the index of all National Geographic Maps available on Google Maps Engine.
Following up on my previous post about great new travel planning apps, Google has just come out with their infinitely useful “Tour Builder” maps feature, released on Veteran’s Day. From Google:
Tour Builder is a new way to show people the places you’ve visited and the experiences you had along the way using Google Earth. It lets you pick the locations right on the map, add in photos, text, and video, and then share your creation.
Recently Google Labs released its Julia Map fractal renderer – a neat project that uses the power of HTML5, the simple Google Maps interface, and remote processing to zoom endlessly into fractals. Try it!
Google:
Julia sets are fractals that were studied by the French mathematician Gaston Julia in the early 1920s. Fifty years later, Benoît Mandelbrot studied the set z2 ? c and popularized it by generating the first computer visualisation. Generating these images requires heavy computation resources. Modern browsers have optimized JavaScript execution up to the point where it is now possible to render in a browser fractals like Julia sets almost instantly.
Julia Map uses Google Maps API, and HTML 5 Canvas to render the images. It will let you browse these fractals in an interactive manner. We hope you will enjoy exploring the different Julia sets, and share the URLs of the most artistic images you discovered.
Update 2011-03-11** Ben Beyda just sent over this new fractal rendering engine, Fractal Lab. From Ben: “We could see this project being pushed even further by adding the ability to create animations from these infinite worlds, which could then be exported and integrated into live visuals and other video-based work.”
Fractal Lab is a WebGL based fractal explorer allowing you to explore 2D and 2D fractal. The fractals are rendered using the OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL) to enable real-time interactivity.
I recently took a vacation to Alaska. It was a great escape from the city, and an awesome return to the backcountry for my Brother and I, who have both spend time backpacking there. There are a few photos in this blog post, and the rest of them, including captions describing most of the trip, can be found over on flickr. Check out all the Alaska photos.
The view from our kitchen in the backcountry of Denali State Park
During the trip, I took about 700 pictures, along with a few videos. My father also took a couple hundred, as did my brother. I actually uploaded all the photos to flickr, but I think for the sake of time and giving you a good overview of the trip, I’m only making the top 50 or so publicly accessable. If you would like to see more photos from a particular section of the trip, or if you’re planning a trip to the AK and want to know more about any particular section of it, just let me know. I’d be happy to open up more photos and videos.
Throughout the trip, I carried my Garmin eTrex Vista HCx GPS with me, with rechargeable batteries and a 1gb micro SD Card. It was set to record a track log every 30 seconds, and was on for most of the trip. Additionally, for road navigation, I as using Garmin’s US Road Atlas 2008. The whole system worked very well. I made sure to synchronize the clock in my camera, as well as my fathers and brothers cameras to the clock in the gps, so that all time stamps line up.
We took a flight with Talkeetna Air Taxi around the mountains in Denali National Park. The maximum altitude for the plane was 10,000 feet, but Denali tops out around 20,000 feet. The whole flight we were flying very very close to the steep walls of the mountains.
When I got home, I successfully merged the GPS track log with the EXIF data on the photos, and Geotagged each photos. If you go to the flickr photo set, you’ll see a map link on each photo, which will show you on a map approx where the photo was taken. The gps is typically accurate to about 7 feet, and since it takes a track log recording every 30 seconds, if i was moving while shooting, depending on how fast i was moving (500+ mph in the air, 2mph hiking, etc), the location could be off a bit.
Extending the geocoding of the pictures a little further, I used Jet Photo studio to create this interactive photo gallery, with the Google Maps API. Each photo is placed on the map at around where it was taken. Additionally, all the (public) photos have map links, which will place them on the map.
These flowers were blooming in a recently burned down forest. Regrowth and renewal.
Media Links:
Flickr photoset of Alaska 2008. If you’re a friend of mine on flickr, you should be able to see slightly more pictures than what I’ve made public.
During the backcountry portion of the trip, my brother and I found a crashed NOAA Weather Balloon with an attached Radiosonde. I’m writing about that in a separate post.
We made a bunch of friends in Alaska. Here’s the blurbs on a few of them…
Andy Morrision runs Alaska Backcountry Access, his own outdoor guide company. Andy is a great guide, and does a ton of trips. We went jet boating up the river, and kayaking with him
Rachel Drinkard lives in Girdwood, and works as a reporter and writer. Her blog, Anarchy in the AK, covers all sorts of Alaskan issues and stories. She came boating and kayaking with us.
Ron Tenny and his wife Michelle run the Hidden Creek Bed and Breakfast, and were very hospitable to us. We had a great time staying there, an awesome breakfast, and fun discussing the area, and the industry with Ron and his son and daughter.
In Girdwood, we grabbed a relaxing dinner and felt like locals at Chair 5.
The marina in Seward, Alaska. The Chugatch mountains are jutting out in the background.
And for the videos – I’m posting up two videos to this post, but there are many more – including the full footage from the weather balloon. Those will go up in a bit, after I’m done editing them together etc.
Ermine Hill, Denali State Park, Alaska
Taking a break on after hiking to the top of Ermine Hill, a small peak within the Kesugi Ridge, in Denali State Park, Alaska. The view up there was incredible, and the terrain made us feel like we were on another planet. After finding a weather balloon crashed, I kept on expecting to find a lunar rover or something.
Flying Next To Denali
During our flight with Talkeetna Air Taxi, we flew right next to Denali, making sharp turns to weave in and out of the peaks, and through the clouds.
RSS Feed of photo set
